A Chat with Oliver Wise, the Newest Member of the Socrata Family

Meet Oliver Wise, the newest member of the Socrata family!

Wise joins us as a Digital Government Principal after an impactful career in public service, most recently as the Founding Director of the Office of Performance Accountability for the city of New Orleans.

Working in city government, Wise saw firsthand that city employees were working hard, but saw an opportunity for them to do a better job working smart. He saw data as an abundant but under-utilized asset that could help them solve the challenges facing their communities.

Wise shares a story about a tragedy in New Orleans where a house fire killed 5 residents and unnerved the community. Inspired to prevent future fatalities, Wise's team used data to figure out the areas of the city that were most in need of smoke detectors. Their work was recognized by the Fire Chief, the city's firefighters, and the larger community when a smoke detector they installed using this intelligence helped save 11 lives from a fire later that year.

Wise has come to Socrata to apply the lessons he learned in New Orleans at scale. He is excited about the mission to help governments make data liquid and use it to solve problems. He sees Socrata's leadership, tools, and public commitment as assets that will help Socrata realize this mission.

Wise will be working with clients from governments of all shapes and sizes to help them figure out how to solve problems using data. He will also work with the Socrata product team to make sure products align to the needs of governments, as well as the larger civic community.